State prisons chief Tucker in talks with U.S. attorney's office

Gov. Rick Scott's top prison official, Secretary of Corrections Ken Tucker, is in discussions with the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Florida for a possible position there. "We're definitely having discussions, but it's not final yet," Tucker said. "I'm not ready to comment on that yet."

Tucker, who is scheduled to leave the nation's third-largest prison system and enter a deferred option retirement program next March, has been seeking other employment opportunities. But he was passed over for a position coordinating drug trafficking investigations in Northeast Florida.

"We're looking at my tenure not being a lot longer over there," Tucker said of the prison system.

Tucker spent more than two decades at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and was named state prisons chief in August 2011, replacing Edwin Buss, a Scott hire from Indiana who quickly ran afoul with the governor's office.